Posted on Feb 23, 2008 - 2:11pm by Eric Cumberworth in News, Politics, Video Games
The U.S. intelligence community is developing software to detect violent extremists in the World of Warcrfaft and other massively multiplayer online games. According to a data-mining report from the Director of National Intelligence, this project, known as the Reynard project, will begin with profiling online gaming behavior. The ultimate goal of the Reynard project is “automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.”
The cultural and behavioral norms of virtual worlds and gaming are
generally unstudied. Therefore, Reynard will seek to identify the
emerging social, behavioral and cultural norms in virtual worlds and
gaming environments. The project would then apply the lessons learned
to determine the feasibility of automatically detecting suspicious
behavior and actions in the virtual world.
The report is publicly available, as mandated by Congress. Read the full report in .pdf format.
It’s interesting that Reynard the Fox is a trickster in folklore and literature.
7 Responses
Oh no! I thought I was safe.
Now my secret Identity of a gamer will be revealed by the government.
I wonder why they want to conduct studies on gamers though. Even though it’s research available they never tapped into – what would be the benefit?
The government is always starting useless money wasting projects. I guess this is there next one. I mean seriously. I doubt that terrorists are playing world of war craft in there spare time.
I can see them running this on like Cod4, (or Americas Army, but they’re probably already doing that), but WoW? That makes little to no sense really, because we know, all terrorist’s use “Merciless Gladiators Ringmail Spaulders” to train for they’re next bombing attack…
TAlking about idiots this is one of the best ok people don’t sleep the night to find a way to stole and waste the public money
what a shame
ya so pretty much we’re gunna go on and be like okay guys! we’ve got 5 tanks in position right now! and the govt
is gunna be like OMG! TERRORIST!!
ROFL Inferno you have a great point, why would terrorists be playing world of warcraft? hahahaha
you made my day ^^
Im not that into WOW but how many of you have overheard real terrorists saying stuff like “OK! Guys lets talk about our secret plans that we have IRL before we slay that boss”…
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